


All The World's A Stage

by vix_spes



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, musical theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vix_spes/pseuds/vix_spes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some people who will do anything to get who they want, regardless of the risk of public humiliation....</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The World's A Stage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaosmaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmaka/gifts).



> Title taken from Shakespeare's 'As You Like It'

Fifteen minutes ladies and gentlemen. Fifteen minutes.”

Arthur took a deep breath and fought the urge to bolt for the toilets and throw up everything in his stomach. Not that there had been much in his stomach anyway. The nerves had been eating away at him all day. He couldn't believe that he had volunteered to do this. He had to have been out of his mind at the time. He had been of course, out of his mind with lust. The object of said lust? A rather unconventional looking scrawny theatre geek. And not just a theatre geek but a musical theatre geek at that. Arthur was as far from being a geek as you could possibly get. He captained the rugby team and the cricket team and up until three months ago had never stepped inside a theatre unless he was being forced to attend one of his step-sisters recitals.

He was blaming Lance. That was his excuse and he was sticking with it. Lance's girlfriend Gwen was a theatre geek as well and he had wanted his friends to meet her as their social circles didn't interact at all. It had been one of the most excruciatingly awkward meetings at first; none of them had known what to say to each other. Leon had stared at Morgana like a love-sick puppy as always and seriously, considering how intelligent and sensible the man was, Arthur couldn't understand that at all. Then again, Morgana was his step-sister. Lance and Gwen had spent most of the time staring into each other's eyes and generally being all sickeningly sweet and disgusting. When they hadn't been staring at each other, Gwen and Morgana had got on like a house on fire and Lance seemed to get on well with the friend that Gwen had brought with her. Gwaine had been pretty taken with him as well, pulling his usual seduction routine that had the kid blushing like mad. He'd been quite attractive as well. Arthur couldn't remember his name for the life of him because it was something unusual (although his step-sister was called Morgana so he didn't really have a leg to stand on) but he had caught Arthur's attention. They barely spoke but Arthur couldn't get the skinny boy with the overly-large ears out of his head. When a couple of days had passed and he still couldn't stop thinking about the other guy, he resorted to the least embarrassing method of extracting information; the internet. Oh no doubt, knowing his step-sister, Morgana had every single last detail on the two theatre geeks (she'd gotten on well with the boy as well as Gwen) from their contact details to what presents they'd received on their sixth birthday but there was no way that he was going crawling to Morgana for what he wanted.

Instead he resorted to the university website and the sub-site for the Guild Musical Theatre Group. There he found what he was looking for. Or some of it at least. Gwen's skinny friend was called Merlin Emrys and yes, Arthur was more than aware of the irony there considering his own name. He was a sportsman but he wasn't stupid. Merlin, along with Gwen, seemed to be one of the movers and shakers of the GMTG and had been heavily involved with the group since he had started at university. Each member of the group had a mini profile on the page and, according to the generic questions that each member had answered, Merlin was studying Classics and Medieval History, loved reading and playing the piano, had a six month old kitten called Mordred and had progressed from chorus roles to smaller bit parts to being cast in one of the principal male roles in the last production. In the upcoming production of Carousel, the one that was starting auditions next week, he was auditioning for one of the lead roles as well as being assistant director. Over the next few hours, Arthur kept coming back to the window with Merlin's profile on it as well as the information on the auditions. The page with the audition information had a form to submit in order to get an audition time and as the afternoon progressed, Arthur filled out said form but couldn't quite bring himself to press 'submit', constantly going back to the page with the mouse hovering over the 'submit' button but not quite able to do it. Then the boys had phoned him and asked if he wanted to go down to the pub to watch the match so he'd gone and, inevitably, what was only supposed to be a few drinks had turned into rather more than that. When he'd returned home, his mind hazy from the alcohol, he had thought that applying for an audition was a good idea, a way of spending time with and getting to know Merlin.

The following morning, mind still hazy from the previous night's alcohol consumption, he was definitely not expecting to see the email sat in his inbox giving him the time and date of his audition for the GMTG's next production. He had very little intention of actually turning up for the audition until, the day before, he was having lunch with his friends and Morgana and it emerged that they had all applied for auditions for the production. All of them with the exception of Lance and Gwaine. Lance had offered to help with backstage and Gwaine simply stated that he would be willing to come and support them. Of course, where Gwaine was concerned, support them pretty much meant point and laugh. Between them, they persuaded Arthur that he really did want to audition and he just knew that he was going to go through with it.

He did go through with it in the end. That was inevitable. He was fairly confident that it was a complete and utter disaster for one reason and one reason alone. On the audition panel, in his role as assistant director, was Merlin. He'd been completely and utterly distracted by the brunet and when it came to the day that the audition results were posted, he had absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he had failed to get a role. Merlin had scooped the role of Billy Bigelow and, having seen his audition, even Arthur knew that it was well-deserved while Gwen would be playing Julie Jordan, his sweetheart. Both Leon and Morgana had done well, earning the next biggest roles of the lovers Enoch Snow and Carrie Pipperidge. Leon was going to be delighted; he was actually going to have an excuse to make moon-eyes at Morgana for the next few months. For his part (and despite his disastrous audition), Arthur had managed to make it into the chorus which essentially meant that he played a seaman. Fairly respectable considering the fact that he definitely could neither sing nor dance and he was fairly certain that he couldn't act either. The most important thing was that he got to spend time with Merlin.

Six weeks later, it was completely worth it. Despite the dance rehearsals, singing rehearsals, the aching muscles and the complete and utter humiliation, it was worth it. He'd been welcomed into Merlin's circle of friends with open arms despite a few misunderstandings at first and had become good friends with Merlin himself.

“Why did you do this if you can't handle being on stage?”

Arthur looked up from where he had been hovering over a waste-paper bin and trying not to throw up to see Merlin looking at him, all ready for his first appearance on stage. “What?”

“Why have you put yourself through all of these rehearsals if you're like this at the thought of going on stage? Why put yourself through that?”

“Why do you think?” Arthur couldn't believe it. Was Merlin really this dense? Just as realisation dawned on Merlin's face, Arthur was just about ready to hit his head against a brick wall.

“You did it for a girl. That explains everything. Who is it?”

Arthur tried to stop himself from groaning out loud. That brick wall was looking pretty damn good right about now. They'd already had the fifteen minute call so the probability that they had time for Arthur to explain this now was pretty much non-existent. It looked as though action was going to be the way forward. Taking a deep breath to gather his courage, he rose from his position and stepped forward, backing Merlin up towards the wall. When Merlin couldn't move back any further, Arthur crowded into his personal space and leant forward, closing the gap between them. He paused briefly to make sure that Merlin wasn't freaking out (unlike Arthur who was internally losing it) and then leant in, brushing a soft kiss against Merlin's lips before pulling back.

“Oh!” A pleased smile started to creep across Merlin's face. “Well, now probably isn't the best time for this but we could go for a drink later?”

Arthur grinned, his nerves suddenly gone, and leant forward to drop another kiss to Merlin's lips. “I'll hold you to that _Mer-_ lin.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you would prefer to comment on LJ, you can do so [here](http://vix-spes.livejournal.com/89082.html)


End file.
